New York Asian 2025 Review: LAST SONG FOR YOU, Struggling Songwriter Faces His Past

A struggling songwriter tries to revive his career in Last Song for You, a modest drama that works better than you'd expect.

Ekin Cheng stars as So Sing-wah, a musician who's sunk so low we first see him recovering from an overdose in a hospital. As he is discharged, he encounters Ha Man-huen (Cecilia Choi), his childhood sweetheart.

Flashbacks show So and Ha (played as a youngster by Natalie Hsu) meeting in a music store and gradually forming a relationship. Both are awkward, almost social outcasts, but together they find a way to express their feelings.

In the present, So attends Ha's funeral, surprising acquaintances who haven't seen him in months. Later he is upset by a visit from Summer, who tells him she's Ha's daughter. So is forced to admit that he lost touch with Ha at school.

Against the odds, Summer persuades the reclusive So to help her spread Ha's ashes in Japan. The past mixes with the present as So remembers incidents with Ha.

Ha was the only person to encourage So (played in the past by Cantopop star Ian Chan) to pursue his music, even helping him enter a songwriting contest.

While still in school, So studies songwriting, eventually penning several hits. But in the present, he's hit a slough. He refuses to collaborate with songwriters sent to him by his agent, cuts himself off from friends and musicians, and claims to despise current pop.

The trip to Japan with Summer may help So recover some of his creative spark. Especially after he begins to realize Summer's true identity.

In the film's emotional highlight, So and Summer share shots in a jazz bar. Loosening up at last, So worries that "Music has left me in the dust." His decision to leave Ha many years earlier still haunts him.

Making his directing debut, Jill Leung successfully juggles several time frames and story lines, avoiding some of the traps of time travel stories while pulling back from overt sentimentality—for the most part.

Because Last Song for You is nothing if not sentimental. So loses his first love two times while sacrificing his career in a way that leads to depression. It's a difficult role that Ekin Cheng pulls off mostly by holding back. His gaze is always guarded, his movements cautious, his speech clipped and taciturn.

Viewers in Hong Kong will appreciate how So Sing-wah's career mirrors Cheng's own up-and-down popularity as a singer and movie star. Cheng broke through with Young and Dangerous, a sort of Triad Young Guns, back in 1996, and for years battled to be taken seriously by critics and filmgoers.

Leung's script tackles the conflicts between popularity and creativity head-on. "I can't write a song only I will like," So acknowledges when his agent asks him to revise a song to make it more commercial. But at the same time, he asks, "When I stop being stubborn, have I sold myself out?"

Both Cheng and Leung understand the fight between making money and creating art. Both seem to want and fear commercial success in equal measure.

Cheng is strong in a demanding role, but Natalie Hsu is the heart and soul of Last Song for You. She delivers a performance so assured and convincing that it helped her win the Screen International Rising Star Asia Award at this year's New York Asian Film Festival.

Leung manages to engineer a happy ending that includes Cheng and Ian Chan dueting on So's new song over the closing credits. Chan Kwong-wing, who scored The Storm Riders, Infernal Affairs, and many other films, wrote the music here as well. He and Cheng have been working together over 30 years, one more element that adds to Last Song for You's authenticity.

The film enjoyed its North American premiere at the 2025 New York Asian Film Festival.